You've convinced me.

I don't worry too much about most shader/materials as I'm primarily concerned with how the satin/organza/chiffon/silk materials look. I love the shimmery sheen of diaphanous items. I've played with those in Iray with less than spectacular results. At least Cycles is open source and information is freely available, unlike Daz's version of Iray.

A point I just thought of is using Cycles shaders made for Poser users. I read the Poser forums daily and took quite an interest in Baggibsbill's work on shaders for nylon and silk stockings (yum!). Is there any reason I can't use them on my imported items?

Thanks again.

I'm of the load-pose-render crowd and love to build huge scenes with lots of characters (wearing lots of clothes) and piles of props. My render times in IRay stretch into days for mediocre results. Do the shaders translate into Cycles without too much fiddling? I'm wondering if it would be worth it to me to try as I already do a lot of modeling in Blender. At the same time, I don't want to have to spend six hours adjusting shaders to save three hours off a render. Thanks.

This is very nice but like VWD, I'm not paying for beta software. WHEN (if?) he has a fully functional, ready to go program I might consider it. There are now two folks all working to the same end asking me to give them money on faith. I've been burned on that once before and will not fall for it again. Maybe the people working on VWD and this guy should get together and work on ONE program. Dforce isn't great but it's free. That's tough to compete against.

When I rename directories I usually leave the vendor's name in brackets at the end. I never remember who made an item but I usually know the name or rough description of what I'm looking for. I've been at this since Poser's first debut and have a runtime that defies description. I now use Studio and keep the same practice for Daz formatted stuff.

Thanks Donnena, that seems straight forward. I assume that the content maker's name is not required? I've always hated ego folders and change them after installing a product.

I experience the same thing. Two figures (and all their clothing) fits nicely whereas three puts it over the card's limit and it drops to CPU processing. While mine doesn't crash, it keeps restarting the render at some point. The image gets better and better, indicating that the render is continuing, I just have to cancel and save it at some point.

I'm not impressed with having to use a proprietary renderer and am watching the gents at Daz3D who are writing a plugin to use the OpenGL(?) of some open source renderer.

This article appeared in /. yesterday. Good news for us. https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/07/03/0758213/as-cryptocurrency-values-plummet-graphics-card-pricing-improves-dramatically

Don't get your panties in a knot for a new graphics card just yet. It seems that Nvidia has a large (massive, gargantuan) overstock of existing cards it has to flog. They're saying via press releases that the new cards won't be ready until next year but we all know that this is just marketing speak for, "we over estimated the amount of cards that the bitminer's would buy and now have to get rid of them despite the fact that our new (super and amazing!) cards are almost ready."

I'm going to sit on my wallet at least until next year. The new AMD 'snotripper' (or whatever it's called) chips will settle down in price and availability, motherboard manufacturers will optimize their boards and massage reliability, and lastly, the video card war will (should, might, maybe?) settle down.

I hadn't realized that a redesign was planned. Does this mean they're finally going to make the GUI more sensible? In any case, here's something that new (and some experienced) users should look at,

https://www.bforartists.de/

It's a Blender but with a new dress. As much as I love Blender, I don't use it often enough to keep the shortcuts fresh in my memory. This fork simply puts a new GUI on it which is much more conventional and menu driven, vice relying on memorized shortcuts. The shortcuts are still there, you just don't need them. I find it much easier and faster to use.

I have long recognized that no one here has the slightest idea about successful marketing since they consistently do stupid things that drive people away. People who understand this stuff turn their bitterest enemies into their most ardent supporters by engaging them and being honest. Here, they just ban you, turning people into disgruntled ex-customers who go elsewhere.

Getting back to the original post.....are we all here? The older clothing for Vicky Three and Four is still great and surpasses the wardrobe offered for all of the genesis girls together. dforce, as buggy, half-implemented as it is, allows the terrific older fashions to be used on all the newer girls, and the new ladies sure do appreciate it. My girls are not into the new wave of sci-fi and fantasy weirdness. There are places where fans of all this old stuff hang out but linking to them, possibly even mentioning them will get me banned...again. It's not up to Rendo to keep these items here. When the content creator moves on or drops out, he/she takes their items with them making them NLA (No Longer Available). We need a determination similar to what the gamers pushed through. When a game is no longer supported by the publisher, AND a certain amount of time has lapsed, the game is deemed to be in the public domain and fans are welcome to it.

Here's the first video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUw4SL8CUYk

Addendum: Tilting the camera up/down will change your view but the range is limited because of distortion. You also have _some _ movement up or down. Again, watch for distortion. You'll quickly get a feel for what panos work best. I like large groups of people so I look for panos that have a large 'clear' area and in which the camera is set some distance away. Remember that 1/3 area.

Hi truthordare, I did some experimenting last night with a bunch of HDRIs I'd made myself using panoramas downloaded view istreetview.com (links and info at end of post). As you've already discovered, moving the dome has no effect. Rotating it does indeed spin the dome enabling you to use the view that you want. I found that a setting of ~260º sets the dome at it's centre point (more or less). The up and down part is accomplished by moving your figures. I used a small group of four ladies in an exclusive bridal shop in London England. I quickly discovered that using a normal camera focal length of 50mm gives a view that is not distorted. Going shorter (less than 50mm) causes distortion because of the wide angle). Your view is limited to the middle one third (approximately) horizontally. I found that moving the figures up and down allowed me to set them on the floor (figuratively). If they appear out of scale in respect to the back ground, move them towards you (in the viewport) or away. To make them appear larger or smaller. You'll then have to move them up/down and left/right to get them back into the proper spot. I found it to be a fairly tedious process but using the Aux viewport made it quicker for rough positioning. Do a small render to judge final placement.

I always do interior renders and experienced increasing frustration with the excessive render times in Iray. I also found that the available interiors where not to my liking as I'm not into Sci-Fi, fantasy, or ruined and demolished buildings. A post in another forum (no, not Daz) pointed me towards istreetview which has been a Cowsend. I've gotten several dozen excellent panos which I've turned into HDRIs. The variety is endless and it's easy to spend a lot of enjoyable hours cruising the globe looking for interesting panos.

The following two videos detail the process and are excellent. Don't bother with buying the loooong and drawn out tutorial from Dreamlight unless you want to spend two hours being bored to tears and watch him stumble around. These two (FREE!) videos get right to the point and in fifteen minutes give you all you'll need to know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUw4SL8CUYk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxaW9FdxhKI

RHaseltine.... Instead of some short, semi-cryptic, off the cuff answer, how about a proper explanation of what's going on and how the OP can make the dome (or figures) do what he wants. In typical Daz fashion, they've thrown a capability out into the wild with no instructions or explanation of how one uses it.

I've never trusted the number of forum users listed here. It always seems to hover around the 3000 mark regardless of the time of day. Even on New Year's eve it was the same. I believe it to be nothing more than a marketing ploy to make folks think that there's more people here than there actually are.